The Cake That Broke My Will

So in a comment on my last post, Lis, asked if I knew of a recipe for caramel cake. Not yellow cake with caramel frosting, but caramel cake. I happened to have one. I told her in the email that I had not made it but I got to sitting and thought, how dumb to give her a recipe I haven’t tried, so I just went ahead and made it today. I have to say that this smelled so good that I had to break down and take a bite(just one) of this cake. It was SUPER yummy. There is definitely more caramel flavor in the frosting than the cake but the cake does have a distinct flavor of caramel and all the extra sugar gives it a nice crispy(yet soft…doens’t make sense I know) top. It’s also a nice moist cake, which I love.

This cake does have quite a few steps. It is important for the cake that you make sure that your caramel for the cake cool or else the minute it hits the batter it will harden up. If this does happen, don’t fret, put your mixer on high speed and blend for 3 minutes. You wont get all the chunks out but it will be kind of like toffee chips in your cake and there is nothing wrong with that. If you cake cracks simply cut it into pieces(not including one with the crack) and frost each one individually. If your cake is beyond crack repair, chop it up into little squares. Place a scoop of vanilla or better yet Haagen Dazs Caramel Cone on top of it. Make a caramel sauce and drizzle over.

2. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease two 9-inch cake pans, place parchment paper in the bottoms, then grease and flour the bottoms and sides.

3. Cream butter in bowl of electric mixer. Add 11/4 cups sugar and continue to beat until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating until each is well-incorporated. Stir in 4 tablespoons of the reserved syrup.

4. Sift together the cake flour, baking powder and salt. Combine milk and vanilla. Add flour mixture to the batter alternately with the milk mixture, beginning and ending with the flour mixture. Beat until smooth. Divide batter evenly among the two prepared pans and bake 25 minutes, or until wooden toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Oh yeah baby.. this is EXACTLY what I was looking for.. thank you again, so much! And I am very happy that you ended up making it – because if you hadn’t said something about making sure the caramel syrup was completely cool, I might have rushed and put it in while still warm. Great tip! Thanks

I know it’s probably a little late to ask this about this post, since it’s an older one, but…

The recipe you post calls for 2-9″ round pans, which you frost and stack, but your photo seems to only show one (tall) layer. Do you use something else to cook your cakes in (many of your cakes are single-layer, which I actually prefer the look of)? Something taller? Could you recommend anything?

Thanks SO much – I LOVE your site and have been visiting regularly for months!

i’m looking to make your caramel cake for 75 guests, at the end of an hors d’oeuvre/cocktail party. what’s your suggestion on how many times to multiply the recipe? does x1 = 16 or 20 or something? have you tried this cake after refrigeration for a few days; how is it?

This sounds really good… I’m going to make it this weekend! I was thinking of using a bundt pan. Do you know if that would that alter the cooking time or temperature? I thought it would be fun to fill the center of the cake with more spun sugar or maybe caramel candies.

I made it tonight! It came out fine in the bundt pan. I lowered the temp to 325 and baked for about 40 minutes, because I wasn’t sure how fast it would cook. I added toffee pieces to the cake mix because, well, the more candy the better, right?

I had a hard time with the caramel frosting. I measured carefully and used a candy thermometer, and while the frosting came out tasty–my husband is eating the leftovers with a spoon right now!–it’s pretty granular. I’m not sure what I did wrong. I’m wondering how accurate of a temperature measurement I had… even with the narrowest pan I own, the frosting didn’t come up very high on the thermometer, and the thermometer was too tall to clip to the pan, so I was holding it and trying to keep it off the bottom. I’ve never used one before–I actually bought it just to try this recipe–so I guess I’ll figure it out. (Are there small candy thermometers out there? Mine’s about 14 inches tall. It was the only one in the store, but it’s unwieldy.)

Thanks for all the recipes and the inspiration. I’ve been making your cakes right and left for the past few months. I tried your peanut butter cup cake last month… it was great!

I made this last weekend for a birthday party and it was a huge hit. I made a few changes — added 2 teaspoons cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger and 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg to the batter to get more of a caramel spice cake effect. Also, I mixed in about half a cup of the frosting with about a cup of mascarpone cheese and filled the two layers with it (I cannot tell you how good this was). I frosted the top and sides with the regular caramel frosting and made similar sugar decorations with a lone blackberry in the center. I also drizzle some warm blackberry jam across the top (mostly for decoration). The cake was a huge hit – thanks for the recipe!

I’m planning on making this for my friends birthday, but I’m a little confused. The recipe says to put in 4 tablespoons of the reserved syrup when making the cake. What do I do with the rest of the syrup?

Hi! I made this last night. Very tasty! I just had a couple of questions. First is about the syrup. Once I let it cool to add it to the batter it was hard like candy. I even made this part twice to try to correct it. Second is about the frosting. I followed the directions exactly, but the frosting was still really grainy. Any suggestions? Thanks.

“Why does your cake have only one layer but the recipe calls for two? Or why does your cake look thicker than mine?
If you are a regular reader than you know that I bake a lot. You also know that my husband is a picky eater and doesn’t eat half the things I make. And I can only eat so many baked goods.
So to compensate this I make half batches or quarter batches of cookies. I half most recipes. I almost always make mini cakes. To make the mini cakes I either use 4 ½ inch springform pans or I take one 9-inch round and cut it with a cookie cutter. And sometimes I just make a single layer cake.
However, I always give the recipe for the full size cake because I realize that most people are not just making a cake for 2 people.”

I made this cake last nigh and I had a hard time with the syrup becoming syrup. I did it 3 times! My biggest problem (so far) is that the cake didn’t rise! It’s almost like I have 2 flourless cakes. Hopefully the taste is great. I haven’t made the frosting but I’m doing that tonight when we eat it!

I make a similar caramel icing, and when it sugars (comes out too grainy), it’s because the mixture didn’t get hot enough while cooking, and the sugar molecules didn’t get fully broken apart. Since their structure wasn’t fully dissolved, when it cools, it goes back to it’s crystalline structure. I’ve given up on the candy thermometer route and just observe carefully when it hits the soft ball stage. You want a soft blob that you can pick up out of the cold water. If you can make a firm ball, you’ve cooked it too long, and your icing will be chewy.

I’ve made a lot of candies in the past using this process. Usually when your finished process becomes grainy, it’s because as you stirred your mixture, it left sugar crystals on the side of your pot. When you took it off heat and poured it or whatever, the sugar crystals went back into your mix, crystallizing the bunch. Usually when you are making a sugar syrup, you need to make sure that you wipe down the sides of your pot as the mixture cools. I usually use a pastry brush with a cup of water. Dip the brush in the water and wipe away all the sugar stuck to the pot above your mixture. Dip your brush in water as needed. Or you can put a lid on your pot for a little bit too. The steam it generates inside the pot will usually clean the sides too. And make sure after you take your pot off the stove, that you don’t stir the mixture with a spoon that has sugar crystals on it.

It sounds like a cake that my grandmother called Burnt Sugar Cake. She would make it for my sister and I for our birthdays. It was my favorite cake growing up. I have never been able to find the recipe anywhere. I will defiantly be trying this.

What did I do wrong? I tried THREE times to caramelize the sugar and then add the boiling water as directed, but every time the sugar turned hard as soon as the water hit it, even though I was doing it slowly and according to the directions. I’m so sad!

Trackbacks

The entrants to Does My Blog Look Good In This. The page will be updated as new photos are entered. The Judges are yet to be selected. Apart from Rob who has been volunteered Each image has been resized……

For this round of Does My Blog Look Good In This there were an impressive 54 entries with some outstandingly professional looking foodporn images submitted. Do have a look at the entires and see if you agree with the judges……

Welcome

Hi I’m Peabody (yep, that’s my first name) and welcome to my site! Here you will find a whole lot of yummy recipes (mostly baking and dessert), positive body image promotion, telling it like it is, and the random things that make up my life. Thanks for stopping by! {More…}